May 28, 2013

"The Adlai Stevenson of the Art World" [Jane Freilicher]

<<<A 1956 letter written by Ms. Freilicher to Frank O’Hara, who celebrated
her in his acclaimed “Jane” poems, initiated various plans to get
together, beginning: “Dear Frankie, I was utterly delighted to get your
cuddlesome letter. Perhaps you don’t know how much I’m missing you but
it is quite a tel’ble lot. It is a terrible thing being the Adlai
Stevenson of the art world without a Young Democrat like you by my
side.”>>>

<<<This
relationship [with John Ashbery], and the others that grew from it, are the subject of
“Jane Freilicher: Painter Among Poets,” an exhibition at the Tibor de
Nagy Gallery in Midtown, a show that places Ms. Freilicher’s work in the
context of her exalted status among the poets of the New York School —
Mr. Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, Frank O’Hara, James Schuyler — to whom she
was muse, confidante, beloved brain. “One doesn’t stay friends with
somebody for 40 years unless they have a lot of nice qualities, such as
brilliance,” Mr. Ashbery wrote two decades ago. “Jane Freilicher is also
the wittiest person I have ever known.”
By implication, the show is an exercise in anthropology as well, an
exploration of an ever-receding way of social life among successful
creative people in the city, one in which the friendships built and
circles configured seemed more firmly rooted in genuine affection, in
affinity, in shared notions of whimsy, than in the prospect of mutual
professional advantage.>>>

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"The Adlai Stevenson of the Art World" [Jane Freilicher]

<<<A 1956 letter written by Ms. Freilicher to Frank O’Hara, who celebrated
her in his acclaimed “Jane” poems, initiated various plans to get
together, beginning: “Dear Frankie, I was utterly delighted to get your
cuddlesome letter. Perhaps you don’t know how much I’m missing you but
it is quite a tel’ble lot. It is a terrible thing being the Adlai
Stevenson of the art world without a Young Democrat like you by my
side.”>>>

<<<This
relationship [with John Ashbery], and the others that grew from it, are the subject of
“Jane Freilicher: Painter Among Poets,” an exhibition at the Tibor de
Nagy Gallery in Midtown, a show that places Ms. Freilicher’s work in the
context of her exalted status among the poets of the New York School —
Mr. Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, Frank O’Hara, James Schuyler — to whom she
was muse, confidante, beloved brain. “One doesn’t stay friends with
somebody for 40 years unless they have a lot of nice qualities, such as
brilliance,” Mr. Ashbery wrote two decades ago. “Jane Freilicher is also
the wittiest person I have ever known.”
By implication, the show is an exercise in anthropology as well, an
exploration of an ever-receding way of social life among successful
creative people in the city, one in which the friendships built and
circles configured seemed more firmly rooted in genuine affection, in
affinity, in shared notions of whimsy, than in the prospect of mutual
professional advantage.>>>